[Terrapreta] Old native earth ovens.

[MFH]

Kurt, very popular amongst the Tolais in ENB also, where its called a Mumu.
They add the stones after the fire is well alight, then smother with banana
leaves, wrap food (veges, bananas, chicken, fish...) in banana leaves in
such a way that the juices are captured, add these and then cover with more
banana leaves. They don't use soil as a cover. Result is that the food is
cooked in its own juices and if ferns and other tasty material are added the
flavours are absorbed and the tastes are wonderful, particularly if coconut
"cream" is also added. Eaten in fresh banana leaves with the fingers. Yummy
stuff.

But I just remembered that by loading the stones and smothering the fire,
some char results, along with the ashes. This is added later to the
vegetable plots. Amongst all the Muumuus I've eaten I never asked why they
did this but presumably they had worked out that this increases fertility
and yields.

The Tolais have only been in ENB for maybe 200 years. But if this cooking
practice had happened over 1000 years, could this build up TP soils? Were
there stones in the Amazon areas to replicate this, or even more
tantalising, did the Amazonians bake clay "balls" and use these instead of
stones, leaving char and pottery fragments?

On another tack, I've been in Highland villages where they had no metal
pots, only wooden ones. They boiled food in these by adding hot stones to
the water, with no damage to the wooden pots.

Max H




-----Original Message-----
From: terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org
[mailto:terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Kurt Treutlein
Sent: Thursday, 29 May 2008 10:19 AM
To: terra pretta group
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Old native earth ovens.

Robert Klein wrote:
>  Hi all
>
>  This appears to be a prevalent cooking method in the Americas.  It
>  was surely  used everywhere else during the stone age were cooking
>  pots were not an option.  These are perhaps unusual because of size.
>

This method of cooking, especially large quantities of food, is also 
very common in parts of New Guinea and especially in the Highlands.

Other areas use containers made of bark, with stones which are fire 
heated, then put into the pot and then reheated etc till the pot boils. 
There are more ways than one to do this sort of thing.

regards,

Kurt

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